


not my day job

by geneeste



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Felicity-Whumping, Pay No Attention to the Woman Behind the Curtain, Temporary Vigilante Felicity Smoak, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geneeste/pseuds/geneeste
Summary: She takes in the scene: several bad guys spread throughout the large room, and there in the middle, on the floor mixed in with the employees of the company they'd been trying to infiltrate, is her big dumb helpless team. Looking big and dumb and helpless.
Relationships: Laurel Lance & Felicity Smoak, Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	not my day job

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! You might notice that this is not a new fic. I’ve been doing some archiving of old fic and realized that I didn’t love how bloated the collection “So It Goes” had gotten; it’s not very reader-friendly, particularly to readers who like to use tagging as a way to filter out stuff they don’t want to read. So I’m pulling out the longer works and publishing them as stand-alone fics. If you’re a subscriber and getting notifications about these, sorry about that! It’s not my intention to spam you, and I backdated these works to help distinguish them from new ones. Thanks for your patience, and happy reading!
> 
> ——
> 
> Silliness ahead. Set somewhere in a nebulous universe where everyone is together and happy and everything is perfect in the exact way I want them to be. Ahem. If I admit that I just wanted to dream up a situation in which Felicity gets to do this, will you guys hold it against me? XD

Felicity adjusts the leather across her chest with one more tug (one very ineffectual, uncomfortable tug), takes a deep breath, and steps quietly over the guy she'd just tazed to get into the hallway. She moves just enough to see into the room ahead.

Ignoring the loud litany of _ohgodohgodgodohgod_ in her head, she takes in the scene: several bad guys spread throughout the large room, and there in the middle, on the floor mixed in with the employees of the company they'd been trying to infiltrate, is her big dumb helpless team. Looking big and dumb and helpless.

As it turns out, heroes who are going undercover as their normal alter-egos are not terribly helpful during hostage situations in which they themselves are the hostages.

Go figure.

All she needs to do is distract the bad guys, long enough for her program to take over the high-tech systems controlling the building to allow for a sufficient amount of chaos to ensue for Oliver and the others to spring into action while she and Diggle dismantle the bomb the bad guys have planted. Two minutes. All she needs is two minutes.

_Oh god, we're all gonna die. Ohgodohgodohgod._

Swinging the bo staff in a manner that she hopes looks graceful and controlled, she makes the loudest, stupidest, most conspicuous entrance possible. It works: the black-clad bad guy closest to the door starts to turn quickly, and seizing the opportunity to seem intimidating, she hits him in the back of the head with a sucker blow and sends him to the floor.

She thinks _holy shit I can't believe that worked_ but instead channels Laurel, and in an only slightly shaky voice, says: "Hello boys."

Oliver's blanching face, Diggle's huge eyes, and Laurel's surprised but approving smirk - it would all be really satisfying if not for the whole pretending-be-a-vigilante-so-the-building-doesn't-blow-up thing.

You know, if not for that.

There's a moment when everything just stops. She looks at the four bad guys left in the room, and they look back at her. She must be a sight; Laurel is taller and leaner than Felicity is, so squeezing herself into an outfit that was at once too small and too long for her had been a feat. Despite the peril involved in this situation, she still fears that her breasts will pop out from the leather corset she stuffed them in, or that the cuffs of the pants she had rolled up would fall past her heels and cause her to trip at the worst possible moment.

But then the moment ends - the bad guys get their wits back and make for her, so she does the only thing she can do: she runs.

Trying not to shriek or scream (which would totally ruin the vibe's she got going - even if she really, really wants to), she remembers her goals: distract the bad guys, move them away from the team, get closer to the bomb.

Being smaller has its advantages, namely she's fast and more able to dodge big burly men, but that only goes so far. So Felicity is particularly grateful and relieved when the lights go out and the sprinklers go off just as one of the bad guys' fingers grasp the shoulder of the Black Canary suit.

The cold of the water is a shock, and she finds that her boots just barely grip the slick floor, and not enough to get away from the man holding on to her shoulder. She realizes that if she can't see anything, he can't either, so she drops to the floor, dislodging his hand but also forcing her back into the tile, knocking the breath out of her lungs.

She rolls over immediately and begins to crawl away as fast as she can, ignoring her aching spine. Behind her, the chaos she'd hoped for is in full swing. She can hear screams and footfalls now, bodies knocking into each other in the darkness, and she hopes that it's a good cover for her three friends to take out the bad guys and come her way. A shot rings out, and she prays that no one has been hit or hurt badly.

" _Canary!_ " Oliver's voice, a little frantic and not nearly as close as she'd like. _Oh yeah_ , she thinks, _that's supposed to be me._ She just barely bites back his name, and yells instead, "There's a bomb! By the cabinets!"

The emergency lights kick in, but the sprinklers are still going off so the visibility in the room is terrible, and she's not wearing her glasses (they make poor substitutes for masks, and she hadn't exactly packed her contacts for this little excursion), so she makes her way in the direction she thinks she'd been going in before the bad guy stopped her.

Unfortunately, she doesn't quite make it. Someone (maybe the same guy as before?) grabs her arm and jerks her over onto her back, and the next thing Felicity registers is bright light exploding behind her eyes followed quickly by the feeling that something has left a gaping crater on the left side of her face.

There's weight on her legs when she instinctively tries to move away from whatever it was that made half her face cave in, and it's just as quickly gone, because there is Oliver - beautiful, blurry soaking wet Oliver, who else could it be with those shoulders - lifting a man right off his feet and then slamming him powerfully down into the floor.

She winces at the sight, and then has to hold back a cringe at the wincing because now her face is dented _and_ on fire, and just what the hell is going on and why is she wearing a leather catsuit in the shower?

Suddenly Oliver's face is close enough for her to make out clearly. His eyes are wild and dark, his fingers just a brush against her cheekbone, and she can't help but flinch at the pressure. His mouth tightens. "Felicity."

She's about to apologize for doing whatever she did that had made Oliver look so upset, when Diggle appears beside him. "Felicity, you said there was a bomb," he asks urgently, "Where is it?"

"Bomb? There's a bomb? Where's a bomb?" She replies, agitated, until her eyes land on the unconscious man Oliver had just assaulted. There on his tactical vest is a walkie-talkie - no, a wireless remote - and the events of the last few minutes all come rushing back to her.

"Oh. OH!" She jerks up and immediately regrets it as her stomach lurches.

"Easy, easy," Oliver says, hands sitting warmly against her upper arms. "No, I have to get up, it's over here, let me up." She stumbles - yep, still wearing crazy boots that are so much bigger when concussed - but Oliver's got an arm around her waist, half carrying her to the cabinets, where she had overheard the bad guys say they placed the device.

That's exactly where they find it, the perfect place on the perfect level for bringing down a skyscraper. Felicity may be riding her own Tilt-A-Whirl, but never let it be said that she can't throw up and guide a comrade in diffusing an IED.

When it's over (only moments later, but it feels like hours), and Laurel is reassuring Felicity that her nose is in fact still attached to her face while gently pressing Oliver's handkerchief into it (which would explain why the sprinkler water tasted so funny - not actually water), she watches Oliver transform from angry and worried vigilante into angry and worried boyfriend.

"What were you thinking, dressing up as Laurel? You could have been killed!" He's so tense, she's surprised he doesn't snap like one of his bowstrings pulled too tight.

For some reason, that makes her furious. "Me? What was I thinking? 'Hi, I'm Oliver, I'm going to break into this super shady new tech company that I know is dealing with really dangerous arms dealers, and I’m going to take all my crime-fighting buddies with me so no one can rescue me if I get caught. This is a great plan, what could possibly go wrong?'"

Her deep mocking voice would be so much more impressive if it weren't so nasal and muffled by the handkerchief, she thinks. Although she swears she hears Diggle snicker and say, 'I told you so.'

Laurel - not laughing, Felicity must be hallucinating that - looks pointedly at the door. "We only have a few minutes before SWAT gets up here, we need to leave." Oliver's eyes narrow at her, and she just knows he's grinding his teeth. She makes a mental note to remind him to schedule a dentist appoint later. "Fine. We'll go. But you are never doing this again."

She knows where that's coming from - probably from the part of Oliver still reeling from seeing her prone on ground after being pummeled by a bad guy - so she agrees with him out loud, promising to stick to the hack-and-monitor side of the family business.

But internally, she knows: if she had to save him, to save her family? She would do it all again, in a heartbeat.

(And it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the costume, which is totally ruined and not hidden somewhere in the back of their attic ready for Felicity to pull out and remember what it's like to be a real-life superhero.)


End file.
